You have a purpose in this world. You have a specific and unique talent that no other person in this world has the ability to offer, except you. Whether or not you realize this fact is the only determining factor that will keep you from achieving the reality of finding your calling in life.

It seems like the number one complaint from people today is a lack of contentment in their work life. It’s no wonder with the myriad of boring office jobs and fluorescent-lit cubicles that people are commonly expressing a feeling of dissatisfaction in their jobs. What most people don’t realize is that these jobs are essential to our evolution as people and also equally effective in being motivational tools to get out there and find something we love!

With the application of the following steps you may begin to see the road out of your current dead-end job and into the captain chair of your life.

-Find what you are best at.

Write down all of the talents and abilities that you have. Organize them in order of the level of skill you think you have in each one and then pick out the top 3 talents.

-Find what brings you the most joy.

Write down the things that you enjoy doing the most. Also organize these by the amount of joy that they bring you and then pick out the top 3.

-Find the common denominator.

Now look for a common theme in your two lists that is closest to the top. Your list might look like this:

Most Skill,          Most Joy,

1.Writing               1.Martial Arts

2.Martial Arts      2.Playing Chess

3.Playing Chess    3. Drinking Beer

You can see that Martial Arts is the common theme in both top 3 lists that rank the highest. You can also see that although writing made it to the top place in the skill column, it didn’t even rank in the joy column, making it a bad choice for pursuing it in your life. You are less likely to achieve success by doing things that you do not enjoy!

-Can it help people?

There is a very obvious loophole here that needs to be addressed. What if, for instance, somebody’s best skill AND most enjoyed thing happens to be eating chicken wings? Although you could become the chicken wing eating champion of the world, it is unlikely that you will be able to support yourself with this kind of work or find the kind of long term satisfaction required to be fulfilled from it.

What one must do is search for something that can help people. The amount of money you can make off of your talent is directly related to the amount of potential it has to help other people. This can be looked at from the standpoint of supply and demand, or from the spiritual view of karmic cause and effect. Offering yourself to the service of others will create an imbalance in your karmic energy and sooner or later it will balance itself with an influx of wealth and success into your own life.

If you find that your common denominator cannot help people then you should move further down in your list to find the next most common denominator. You may have to lengthen your list to four or five items.

-Slowly implement your newly found life purpose.

Congratulations! You have found out that your life purpose is being a Martial Arts Teacher! Hold on. Not so fast. You need to make sure that everything is in order before you quit your current job. You can’t jump head first into something that you may not know enough about or be prepared for. This is where your current crappy office job comes in handy. It allows you to fund your search and education towards achieving your newly found purpose.

I’m sure you are wondering; if everybody was out there working their dream job, then who is going to do all of the boring, tedious jobs that are essential to our countries’ survival? The answer is that regardless of how many people out there are deciding to quit their day jobs in pursuit of their dreams, there will always be 10 more behind them that are using these jobs to make enough money to get to that same point of independence. There is a place for these crummy jobs and you should always be grateful for every opportunity you get in life, no matter how rocky the road may be.

-Make yourself rich, not your boss.

Some people may have the concern that although they love their job, they are not making enough money doing it. My answer to them is always the same; if you are not making yourself rich with your work then you are making somebody else rich. It may take some serious work, grit, and good old fashioned creative financing, but starting your own business may be the only way to do what you love and make a great living doing it. Another thing to consider is that after a few years of working for somebody else in a particular field you will start to make the connections and networking contacts that will help you in figuring out the business models and important factors around starting your own business in this particular field.

Hopefully through these techniques your life purpose will start to become illuminated and as obvious as ever. If it doesn’t seem to line up for you right away, do not get discouraged. Sometimes it may take a while to find your life purpose but getting out a pad of paper and writing down your ideas is the first step to getting the wheels in motion.

The very simple act of bringing this idea to the front of your brain will be a catalyst in your life through helping you notice more things about yourself than you ever did before. This will begin to attract into your life the desired situations and opportunities that you are now clear that you want. Start looking at the world as the playground for your dreams and aspirations, and it will respond accordingly.

“When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.” Wayne Dyer.

By Evan Burton